Get a 27-inch AOC LED monitor for $199.99

Nothing beats a big monitor. Got spreadsheets? Gotta go big. Going tomb raiding (see bonus deal)? Gotta go big. Binge-watching "Arrested Development" before the new season debuts? Bluths are definitely better bigger.

For a limited time, and while supplies last, TigerDirect has the AOC e2752Vh 27-inch LCD monitor for $199.99, plus around $9 for shipping. (Sales tax also applies in a handful of states.) That's $80 off the regular price and one of the best prices I've seen on a monitor of this size.

Of note, Best Buy also has the AOC e2752Vh for $199.99, with free shipping, but sales tax will probably push your total cost a bit higher than if you're able to get it tax-free from TigerDirect.

This is an LED-backlit monitor with a native 1,920 x 1,080 resolution. Some will note that that's on the low side for such a big screen, and I'll agree it would be nice if it squeezed more pixels into the display. But a monitor capable of, say, 2,560 x 1,440 will typically run you at least three times as much. And then you need a video card that can support it.

The AOC features a 2ms response time (meaning it should be blur-free with even the fastest-moving images) and three available inputs: VGA, DVI, and HDMI. It also includes stereo speakers, meaning you could pair it with a game console, Roku box, or Blu-ray player (again, see bonus deal) and use it like a TV.

CNET hasn't reviewed this monitor, but the user reviews at both Best Buy and TigerDirect are strong (with the latter averaging an impressive 4.8 stars out of 5).

Perhaps best of all, this baby comes with a three-year AOC warranty. If you're ready to go big -- really big -- on your desk, this is a hard deal to beat.

Bonus deal: Game time! It was barely a month ago that the new Tomb Raider game arrived tooverwhelmingly positive user and critical reviews. My advice at the time: be patient -- it won't be $50 for long. And, sure enough, Green Man Gaming has Tomb Raider (PC) for $20 when you apply coupon code GMG20-GGN5D-FC3NA at checkout. (This deal went live yesterday, so I'm not sure how much longer the sale price and code will be active.) You'll need a Steam account to download and play the game.

Bonus deal No. 2: I continue to see amazing deals on Blu-ray players. For example: Today only, and while supplies last, 1SaleADay has the refurbished Sony BDP-S185 Blu-ray player with apps and Wi-Fi for $39.99 shipped. Although it's a refurb, it comes with a one-year warranty, according to the product page. Just make sure you're prepared to wait 2-3 weeks for your order to arrive.

Read more »

Can Google Glass ever be fashionable?

Style, this is not.

(Credit: Robert Scoble/Google+)

When real, normal people get a hold of Google Glass, they might be fascinated.

Equally, they might be underwhelmed. Their sense of underwhelment might increase with every mocking comment they get from other real, normal people.

In any case, Google Glass won't be thrust into the real, normal world for a year. Or even more.

Meanwhile, we have to struggle with the knowledge that tech personality Robert Scoble wears his in the public toilets. During the weekend, he even posted an image of his hirsute, unsuited torso, complete with head and Google Glass on nose, in the shower.

Though some would have been moved to paroxysms of excitement at this sight, others would have had their prejudice confirmed that wearing Google Glass made you look like something of an alien. And not in the sense that Ted Cruz might mean.

I tend to side with those who believe that the nerds have lost their marbles with this notion. I feel sure this is why Google is rumored to be discussing Google Glass design with retro spectacle designers Warby Parker.

This is merely an instinctive human reaction. But a more intellectual reasoning for the potential rejection of Google Glass by what's left of normal society was offered by David Galbraith.

The Scottish co-founder of Yelp suggested that it is the very futuristic look of Google Glass that might be its downfall.

In a far-sighted and rear-sighted analysis at Medium.com, he offered that the things people find fashionable all have their roots in the past.

Suits are 18th century hunting wear. Jeans are so 19th century. And those painfully ugly chinos and Oxford shirts hail from Yale students before the world started fighting in the 20th century.

If only they could go back there.

"Looking futuristic is cool if you are a spaceman but not for hanging out in Williamsburg," he wrote.

That, of course, explains the proliferation of terribly expensive vintage clothing stores there.

Galbraith went on to explain that Apple's very popular designs have their roots in post-war Germany.

He likened Google Glass to the Bluetooth headset.

I don't know about you, but every time I see someone wearing a Bluetooth headset I want to quietly walk up to them and then scream very loudly in their ear for them to stop.

Once technology becomes an appendage, it's breaking with style and siding with the weird and not so wonderful.There's something so very inhuman about these things, as if by wearing them, the user is giving up some of their body to technology, ceding a little of their humanity to machine life.

As Galbraith put it: "Tech influencers are very important for Internet services or a device such as the iPhone, but for things we wear, the things which tend to be based on the past, futurists with no particular requirement for fashion sensibility are not necessarily the best predictors of success."

A loose translation might suggest that nerds have never had style and the minute they try and make their gadgets a fashion accessory to be worn, rather than carried, this lack of style beams like a large cheek-zit on a very cold day.

Though some, like Scoble, might express spectacular tumescence over the idea of Google Glass, its success or failure might rest in its becoming less -- rather than more -- futuristic in its look and feel.

Read more »

Will the next Xbox be called Xbox Infinity?

The next Xbox -- still code-named Durango -- has never been formally confirmed by Microsoft as even being in production. But that certainly hasn't stopped the rumors from flowing.

(Credit: Reddit)

The most recent crop suggests that the moniker for the so-called Xbox 720 will actually be the Xbox Infinity, with a logo (including the tagline Infinite Entertainment, Infinite Possibilities) showing up for a time on Reddit, according to a report in Forbes.

The other new rumor surrounds the controller, which is said to have a touch panel similar to that of the PlayStation 4. Not only will it allow gestures, it's also apparently clickable, thus working like the d-pad does on the current generation of controllers.

None of this sounds outside the realm of possibility, but the Forbes story does note that a second "official leak" has revealed a totally different logo, with no mention of Infinity at all.

We'll have more details when Microsoftmakes its announcement on May 21. Until then, we think the following official statement from Microsoft is a good indicator that, as expected, gaming will be just a small part of what the Redmond-based company hopes to sell with its next-generation console: "We're excited to share more about the new generation of games, TV and entertainment on 21 May, but have nothing further to share at this time."In the end, what Microsoft calls the next generation of Xbox isn't nearly as interesting as the hardware configuration, and whether the rumors of the much-maligned "always on" requirement are accurate.

Read more »

Twitter may already have an app for Google Glass

Google co-founder Sergey Brin modeling Google Glass. A now-deleted tweet suggests that Twitter may have already built an app for the wearable computing device.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

If a now-deleted tweet is to be believed, Twitter may already have created an app for Google Glass.

That's TechCrunch's conclusion, at least, as the technology news site has a story up this afternoon positing that someone may already have sent a tweet from an obviously as-yet-unannounced Twitter app for Google Glass.

In the photo that's embedded in the above tweet, it is possible to see that the tweet (assuming it actually existed) was sent from an app called Twitter for Glass. Since the tweet itself has been deleted, we'll never know for sure -- at least not unless or until Twitter actually releases such an app. On the other hand, the link to the photo itself still exists, even if the photo itself doesn't -- it resolves to a Twitter error page, but you can see the URL -- suggesting that at the very least, TechCrunch hasn't had its leg totally pulled.

In its article, TechCrunch pointed to recent comments made by uber-venture capitalist John Doerr at the announcement for a group called the Glass Collective. Doerr, apparently, was heard to have dropped hints that it was just a matter of time before Twitter put out an app for Glass.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The challenge for Twitter, and others jumping on Glass, is adapting to the voice and tap interface. Taking a picture with Glass and tweeting it is a relatively simple function of setting the Twitter app up for the device. But Twitter is primarily a text input service, tapped on the keyboard. Now the service is starting to branch out, and Glass may present its users with new use cases, such as video "tweets" from Vine and audio tweets with a limited time span, a kind of parallel to the 140-character limit. Presumably, users could also dictate tweets to Glass, with some feedback on how many characters of the 140-character limit are left, and ways to add links to the tweet. But voice recognition has clear limitations, so if you see someone wearing Glass muttering to themselves and getting increasingly frustrated, it may be a safe bet that they're trying to navigate some sort of system like that.What's notable about the tweet -- if it was real -- is that it was just a photograph and what one can imagine is stock language, "Just shared a photo #throughglass." That makes sense since Glass wouldn't necessarily make it easy to add text to a tweet. But it would be ideal for sharing photographs from events, walks, stores, or with friends.

Read more »

Man allegedly put GPS on woman's car before burglary

Some GPS devices are tiny.

(Credit: BrickhouseSecurity.com)

Planning a burglary always seems to take so much time in the movies.

Joints must be cased. Hoods must be bought. Cars must be tuned to perfection and driven by people who aren't terribly clever.

One man, though, allegedly used technology to bypass some of these irritants.

As the Kansas City Star reports, Steven Alva Glaze stands accused of 14 counts of criminal damage, attempted burglary and real, actual burglary.

The owner of one of the homes believes that Glaze found a simple way of discovering if she and her son were home. He allegedly placed a GPS device on their cars.

Local police and prosecutors have not commented on these allegations.

However, the woman told the Star: "I came home about 5:30 p.m. I had been storing things in the garage and when I walked in the garage, it was like a war zone."

She had been having her house remodeled and was storing many items in her garage. She claims that after the alleged burglary, GPS devices were on both her own and her son's cars.

The allegation is that Glaze was so confident that no one would be home that he had a truck and trailer pull into the woman's driveway.

This allegedly allowed him to haul away more than $100,000 worth of jewelry, luggage, fur coats and many other valuable items.

Some might wonder where a would-be burglar might get his inspiration from to perform such a deed.

Last month, a group of legislators proposed a bill that would make it illegal for police to either plant a GPS device or use cell phone tracking data without a court-ordered warrant.For some time now, there has been huge debate as to whether it is legal for the police to track suspects using GPS devices without a warrant.

The Supreme Court declared in 2012 that a warrant was required for GPS devices, but cell phone location information still seemed like a gray area.

GPS devices are easy to buy and use these days. It's impossible to always know whether one is being tracked or not.

Again, it's not that you should keep looking in the rear-view mirror, as in the movies. Somewhere under the car might be your first choice of inspection.

It doesn't seem that the criminally inclined have often been accused of using a GPS device to ensure that the targets of burglaries might be empty.

Read more »

Google's Eric Schmidt zeroes in on new digital age

Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman.

(Credit: CBS News)

(CBS News) Connecting us with each other in ever-newer ways is the quest of all our high-tech wizards ... and among those innovators you'll find The "Google Guy." He recently played host to our Rita Braver:

He's considered one of the most influential architects of the Internet, after a dozen years helping build Google (where's he's now executive chairman) into an international powerhouse.

But at 58, Eric Schmidt still remembers struggling with the original IBM personal computer some 30 years ago.

"It used little floppy disks, they were always breaking," he told Braver. "And to give you an idea, your computer, the one that you have on your phone, is about 100,000 times more powerful and has about a million times more disc storage than [the IBM PC]."

Those "dinosaurs" of computing history, now on view in Google's New York offices, are a reminder of how quickly technology can change.

Schmidt says in the future we'll do most of our computing on our mobile devices, with apps that offer a new range of services:

"They'll make suggestions to you," he explained. "They'll say, 'Eric, you're in your office. You should be working!' or 'It's lunchtime,' Or you're walking down the street and it'll say, 'Eric, you need new pants. The pants in the left store are cheaper than the ones on the right store.'"

Google is already working on a new generation of cars that can drive themselves.

Schmidt predicts many more advances in the book he has just co-written, "The New Digital Age." Example: new devices that bring three-dimensional sounds and images right into a room.

Will the Holodeck from "Star Trek" occur in our lifetimes?

"These digital devices will have a memory of where you were and what you did. And so, you'll go into a room and recreate that memory around you, because the visuals will be there, the video is there, and you'll have that tremendous feeling of where you were and what you do," he said. "There'll be devices that you can send to the concert to watch the concert for you while you're sitting at home taking care of the kids. And with a technology called haptic technology, you can feel the pounding, right as you're sitting in your living room."

Read more »

Coming soon: A Breathalyzer for pot and cocaine?

No, that's not a "tobacco pipe."

(Credit: SensAbues)

Some people drive high.

They shouldn't, but they're high, so they don't really know what's good for them and what isn't.

Should they get stopped by police, the long nose of the law can sometimes sniff the presence of marijuana in their car.

Should they happen to have nosed their way into some cocaine, there might be traces of white powder around their nostrils.

As yet, though, there hasn't been a machine that can detect the presence of such drugs on one's breath, as there is for alcohol.

Scientists in Sweden, however, believe they have made some progress in creating such a device.

As the Smithsonian magazine reports, sober minds at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm decided to use an already available breath sampler (created by them) called SensAbues, which claims to analyze breath samples using chromatography and mass spectrometry.

This, allegedly, offers "legally defensible" results.

So the scientists put together a mouthpiece and a microparticle filter and asked 46 patients from a drug clinic to breathe out.

The researchers claim they found traces of many drugs, including pot, cocaine, meth, but also morphine and diazepam.It seems that the small particles that give away drug use get into your prettily named airway-lining fluid. It is these particles that the breath machine tries to trap.

Here's the part that some might find disturbing: these results were achieved 24 hours after the subjects had actually taken drugs.

This might surely suggest a certain complication in any potential police use of such a device.

Are you fit to drive 24 hours after smoking pot? Will there be a certain threshold of drug presence that will signify a safety line? And does the presence of drugs on your breath signify that there are any significant amounts in your actual system?

There's another little kink here. In 23 percent of the samples taken, the machine declared that it had detected drugs when none had actually been taken. Yes, the dreaded false positive still lurks.

Currently, the machine's results have to be sent to a lab for analysis.

But one can surely imagine in a not-too-distant future that your friendly local policeman might have another tool at his disposal to examine just what state you are really in. "Texas" may not be a sufficient answer

Read more »

After WWDC tickets vanish, Apple touts 'Tech Talks,' videos

Programmers who waited more than two minutes to try to get tickets for Apple's 2013 Worldwide Developer's Conference -- and thus missed the boat -- will be happy to know they now have some other options.

In the briefest of announcements, Apple saidFriday that it will be "posting videos of all our sessions during the conference" and also "hitting the road this fall with Tech Talks in a city near you."

The Next Web addresses the "city near you" vagueness by pointing to towns where Tech Talks involving iOS 5 were held in 2011. Could Austin, Texas; New York; Seattle; Beijing; Berlin; London; Rome; Sao Paolo; and Seoul comprise the list for this series of talks as well? We'll no doubt find out before too long.

Apple's WWDC is a mecca for the company's third-party development community, given that it's the only Apple-run developer event of the year. The weeklong conference, which this year costs $1,600 to attend and will be held at San Francisco's Moscone convention center, is made up of developer sessions and labs, and is staffed by some 1,000 of Apple's own engineers.

Read more »

The fastest Android gaming tablets

The development of new chips that deliver zippier performance, smoother gaming, faster Web surfing, and longer-lasting battery life will soon make their way into new Android tablets. While chips themselves and the high-end tablets that will house them, have yet to be released, we have it on good authority that they'll deliver on their promise.

Gaming is an increasingly popular way tablet owners are spending time with their devices and chip makers are paying attention. While the gaming experience on Android tablets has improved by leaps and bounds in just the last year, it's bound to only get faster, smoother, and prettier (and hopefully even more fun).

As of yet however, the new chips don't have confirmed release dates, but if you're looking for an Android tablet that can deliver impressive graphics now, we've got you covered. We gathered every high-performance tablet we could find in the CNET Labs and put them to the test. What lies below are our top seven.

We've listed each tablet with as much pertinent-to-gaming-performance information as we could think of and have listed them here in order, from weakest to strongest based on benchmark scores derived from 3DMark.

---

3DMark runs a canned demo of a simulated sci-fi game called Ice Storm. The 3DMark scores are determined by three tests: two focusing on GPU speed and another on CPU performance. The tests were run on each tablet a few times and the chart below represents the highest score for each tablet, with higher scores indicating faster performance.

Check here for more on the intricacies of 3DMark's scoring system.

Tablet	3DMark (Normal, 720p)	3DMark (Extreme, 1080p)
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1	2767	2088
Samsung Galaxy Note 8	3300	2519
Nexus 7	3545	1889
Kobo Arc	3665	1897
Sony Tablet S	4084	2249
Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700	4298	2397
Nexus 10	8055	5432

---

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 sports a great looking screen and UI.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 
The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1's overall sensible design and great performance make it one of the best Samsung tablets to date. The scores represent overall gaming performance, and is heavily GPU-biased, so despite the Note 10.1's faster CPU, its underwhelming GPU performance lands it last on the list. Read the full review for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1.

Device	CPU	GPU	RAM	OS tested
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1	1.4GHz quad-core Exynos 4 Quad (4412)	Mali T400MP4 (quad-core)	2GB	Android 4.1.2

---

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 features Watch On, Samsung's new universal remote/video hub app.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Samsung Galaxy Note 8
As one of the smaller members of the Samsung Galaxy, the Note 8 has one of the best-looking screens on a small tablets. It shares a few similarities with the Note 10.1, including the S Pen and unimpressive GPU performance matched with a well performing CPU, but the Note 10.1's smaller counterpart edges out its competition with faster gaming scores. Read the full review for the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

Read more »

Low-end specs that yield a low-end performance

I have nothing against entry-level devices. As long as they work well and are priced reasonably, there's nothing wrong with these handsets for people who don't need to be on the bleeding edge of technology.

But while the ZTE Director is indeed priced inexpensively (without a contract, it's $99.99, but with one, the price drops to 1 cent), it's not a great performer. Its screen can be frustratingly unresponsive, its camera takes washed-out photos, and its processor is sluggish. Frankly put, the ZTE Director is more of a Tommy Wiseau than a Steven Spielberg.

Design
With its long chin, smooth matte back plate, and indented edges, the Director looks pretty much identical to all other entry-level ZTE devices, like the T-Mobile Concord and the ZTE Fury, save for the fact that it features three hot keys (back, home, and menu) instead of four.

The Director's right edge houses a shortcut hard key that launches the camera.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Compact and comfortable to hold, the handset measures 4.65 inches tall, 2.46 inches wide, and 0.48 inch thick. Its left edge houses a Micro-USB port for charging and a volume rocker. Up top you'll find a 3.5mm headphone jack and a sleep/power button, and on the right is a launch button for the camera.

On the back, in the left corner, you'll find a camera lens, flash, and a small reflective square for framing self-portraits. Below that are two small slits for the audio speaker. Using a small indent at the bottom, you can pop off the plate to access the microSD card slot (which accepts cards of up to 32GB) and the removable battery.

The 3.5-inch HVGA touch screen has a 320x480-pixel resolution. Unfortunately, the display isn't very responsive, and oftentimes it took several taps for an action to register, whether it be launching an app or closing a window.

It also looked grainy or speckled, which is especially apparent when it displays a blank white image. Lastly, the screen is very difficult to view in sunlight. While taking photos outside, I had to shield the display with my hand in order to see feedback.

Read more »

New Chrome extension can open Office docs

Google Sheets made a mess out of a fairly unsophisticated Excel spreadsheet, overwriting words, dropping a graphic altogether, and generally looking ugly. Google hopes that a new Chrome extension will help eliminate these problems.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Direct browser support for Microsoft Office documents is coming in fits and spurts to Chrome. Google's latest effort is a portly extension for Chrome beta.

If you're running Google Chrome Beta on Windows or Mac, you can now install the Chrome Office Viewer. It will allow you to open links to Office files directly in the browser, a feature that was first announced with the Chromebook Pixel.

However, you're limited right now to merely viewing the files. To edit, you'll have to upload the file to Google Drive, or open it in Microsoft Office or another compatible program. It's also worth noting that the extension is quite large, and at around 25 MB it's close to the same size as the browser installer itself.

Google engineer Jelte Liebrand wrote in the blog post announcing the extension that using it increases computer security by isolating the document in Chrome's sandbox. If it's malicious, it won't be able to spread the malware to your computer. The Chrome Office Viewer is compatible with Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations.

Google's quest to add comprehensive support for Office files to Chrome and Chrome OS has proved elusive, so far. The company purchased QuickOffice last year to provide more robust Office file support, but as my colleague Stephen Shankland reports, it's still painful to use them in Chrome nearly a year later. Chrome OS currently fares a bit better, he wrote, but is still not perfect.

If Google can successfully integrate Office file support in Chrome and Chrome OS, it would go a long way towards bolstering the company's argument that the browser-based operating system that powers Chromebooks and Chromeboxes are worthy competitors to computers running Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Read more »

Nintendo's earnings disappoint as Wii U falls short

Nintendo's Wii U

(Credit: Nintendo)

Nintendo's profit during its last fiscal year ended March 31 turned out to be half of what the company had expected, thanks to disappointing Wii U sales.

During the 12-month period ended March 31, Nintendo saw sales slide 1.9 percent year-over-year to 635.4 billion yen (about $6.4 billion), off its initial estimate of 670 billion yen. The company's operating loss -- a key measure of performance -- was 36.4 billion yen, substantially higher than the 20 billion yen it expected to post on the year.

The one bit of good news for Nintendo was that the company was able to post a slight profit of 7 billion yen. However, the company had hoped to generate a 14 billion yen profit.

Still, it's clear that the Wii U is underperforming. And Nintendo addressed that today in its outlook for the next fiscal year:So, what happened? Blame it on the Wii U. During its last fiscal year, Nintendo sold only 3.45 million Wii U hardware units worldwide. Nintendo's Wii, the device the Wii U replaced, was able to garner 4 million unit sales during the same period. The Wii, though, was on sale the entire fiscal year, while the Wii U was only available for a portion of that time.

For the "Wii U" system, launched in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2013, there were some delays in software development that resulted in intervals between new software title releases at the early stage of this year. Taking this into consideration, for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014, we plan to concentrate on proactively releasing key Nintendo titles from the second half of this year through next year in order to regain momentum for the platform. Nintendo strives to improve the sales by communicating the compelling nature of our hardware and software to as many people as possible through our new network service called "Miiverse," which offers an environment where people can empathize with others and share their gaming experiences. We also strive to reduce costs to improve hardware profitability.

Read more »

Colorful faces

Scroll RightScroll Left

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

NEW YORK--For the last few years, 3D printing has been a technology on the rise. But even after 30 years, the tech hasn't had its day in the sun. Until now. This week, the industry's biggest players have converged on The Big Apple for one of the first-ever full-scale confabs about what is sometimes known as "additive manufacturing."

A packed house of more than 600 people showed up for the Inside 3D Printing event here, and heard talks and saw technology from companies like 3D Systems, MakerBot, Stratysys, and many others. And CNET was on hand to check it all out.

While many 3D printers use materials like various forms of plastics, and sometimes even metals, the Iris from Mcor prints on standard copy machine paper. Yet the machine's print-outs appear to be at least as sturdy as those from many of the company's competitors -- plus, they can be in color.

Read more »